Hats Off to Billy Wilder's Fedora

Legendary director Billy Wilder’s penultimate film is far from his best, but it’s an absorbing yarn nevertheless, with a neat plot twist and lively (if a bit over-the-top) performances. 

Fedora (1978) concerns a Garbo-like superstar who supernaturally retains her beauty and appeal through five decades, only to die under tragic and mysterious circumstances. Superior to Robert Aldrich’s turgid Hollywood fable Legend of Lylah Clare a decade earlier, and the ho-hum 1976 adaptation of Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, Fedora has so far failed to achieve the cult status of those films, or of the more deserving Day of the Locust.  But if you enjoy the “untold tales of Hollywood” genre and are willing to suspend your disbelief, you’re bound to be entertained and engaged. 

Marthe Keller in the title role

While obviously not in the same league as iconic Wilder classics like Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, Fedora has gotten a bad rap, its reviewers implying that the director was somehow losing his faculties when preparing and filming this picture. I personally find it at least as entertaining as some of Wilder’s lesser efforts of the ’60s and ‘70s, including One, Two, Three, Irma La Douce and Avanti. Wilder directed only one more film after Fedora, the forgettable Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau comedy Buddy Buddy. 

William Holden as Barry Detweiller

Perhaps such unfair comparisons are drawn between Wilder’s Fedora and his legendary Sunset Boulevard because both are Hollywood stories of a leading lady as mentally unhinged as Hamlet’s Ophelia…...and the fact that Wilder casts the same leading man in both, a somewhat unfortunate homage now that a haggard William Holden is far from his prime here.

Holden (who won his only Best Actor Oscar for Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17) worked steadily up to his death in 1981, even scoring a huge commercial and artistic success with 1976’s Network, but his continuing struggle with alcoholism had begun to take its toll, and in Fedora he’s not really firing on all cylinders. As Barry Detweiller, a down-on-his-luck producer desperately trying to lure Fedora out of retirement so he can get his film produced, Holden has some good moments, but the heavy lifting of the story is achieved through the efforts of the rest of the ensemble cast. 

Hildegarde Knef as Countess Sobryanski

José Ferrer as Dr. Vando

Frances Sternhagen as Miss Balfour

Stephen Collins plays the young Detweiller in the 1947 Hollywood scenes, when he has a brief fling with the star while assistant director on one of her films. The reliable character actress Frances Sternhagen (Misery, And So it Goes) plays Fedora’s no-nonsense personal secretary. (And amazingly looks the same age today as she did in 1978 when the movie was filmed.) Scene stealer José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac) is gerontologist to the stars Emmanuel Vando, upon whom Fedora depends to maintain her ageless beauty. Hildegarde Knef (The Snows of Kilamanjaro) is the dour, wheelchair-bound Countess Sobryanski, a bitter old crone swathed in black who keeps Fedora firmly under her bony thumb and speaks only in a raspy whisper. Michael York plays himself in a brief cameo, as the catalyst that causes the distraught Fedora to throw herself in front of a train, a la Anna Karenina, and end her stormy life. 

Fedora falls hard for her handsome costar (Michael York)

Marthe Keller is effective as the enigmatic Fedora, once a vibrant superstar and now a schizoid recluse, an amphetamine addict and a virtual prisoner on a private island off Corfu. The Swiss actress had enjoyed quite a Hollywood buildup in recent years, having costarred with Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man and opposite real-life paramour Al Pacino in Bobby Deerfield, and in the big-budget mid-’70s epic Black Sunday.  After Fedora, she appeared with George C. Scott and Marlon Brando in The Formula, but her career as a leading lady in the States never really took off. But as Fedora, Keller gives a creditable performance in a difficult role, though the film’s failure at the box office obviously didn’t do her career much good. 

Young Detweiller (Stephen Collins) and Fedora

Fedora on the set for the nude swimming scene

Without crossing the line into full-on camp, the film offers a heightened reality, rife with melodramatic moods and situations that stretch credulity against a backdrop of picturesque Corfu and Paris locations, embroidered with touches of dark humor and guignol.  Fedora sleepwalks around the Greek island in picture hats and big Jackie O sunglasses, always wearing a pair of white gloves despite the summery climate. A peevish Countess Sobryanski smashes Fedora’s record player with her heavy black cane when Fedora’s music annoys her. Out of the blue, Henry Fonda, billed as the President of the Academy, appears in Corfu with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for Fedora in a velvet drawstring pouch. In the flashback scenes, Fedora swims nude in a pool on the Hollywood studio soundstage a la Esther Williams. Later, an out-of-control Fedora is strapped into a straightjacket by her handlers before they throw her into the back of the Countess’s Roll Royce. And so on...

Fedora and her friends

The shrine to Michael York

Mr. Fonda delivers an Oscar to Corfu

The superstar lies in state

The flamboyant production design of scenes where Fedora’s body lies in state are pure Hollywood-style artifice, replete with the staples of funereal showmanship: hundreds of bouquets of roses and a string quartet playing mournful dirges as the public files solemnly past Fedora’s skillfully spotlighted casket--open, of course! (The effect is eerily similar to the outrageous Campbell’s Funeral Home scenes in Ken Russell’s Valentino, made the previous year.) 

Fedora is based on the short story of the same name in Thomas Tryon’s fascinating collection of fictional tales of classic Hollywood, Crowned Heads. Better known as the author of legendary horror novels The Other and Harvest Home, Tom Tryon began his career as a Hollywood actor. Classically handsome, with chiseled features reminiscent of his contemporary John Gavin (indeed, Tryon lost the part of Sam Loomis in Psycho to Gavin), Tryon appeared in films as varied as I Married a Monster from Outer Space to Otto Preminger’s The Cardinal, and played Marilyn Monroe’s hunky fellow castaway in her last unfinished film Something’s Got To Give in 1962. 

Beefcake actor turned best-selling novelist Thomas Tryon

Tryon gave up acting in the late 1960s to become a very successful novelist, his brand of suspense/horror on a par with Stephen King and Ira Levin. Two of his biggest best-sellers were The Other (made into a 1971 film starring Uta Hagen) and Harvest Home (adapted into a 1970s miniseries with Bette Davis and Rosanna Arquette). Each of these stories featured a famously ingenious plot twist or reversal that results in a satisfying jolt for the unsuspecting audience. (And so does Fedora.) 

  

Deeply in the closet all his life, the bisexual Tryon enjoyed long-term relationships with A Chorus Line original cast member Clive Clerk and with gay porn star Casey Donovan but never publicly admitted his sexuality before his death in 1991 at age 65. 

Though Fedora’s screenplay was written by Wilder and longtime creative partner I.A.L. Diamond, credit for the film’s unique storyline and impressively startling deux ex machina must go solely to original author Tryon...they are what make this lurid and melodramatic film special.  No spoilers will be found here...so see the film if you can!

How old IS Fedora?

Why, Lylah, Why?

I’ve owned a bootleg VHS tape of The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968) for some years now. It was on a wish list of films I’d read about since childhood but never had the chance to see. Then a savvy friend provided me with a copy. I confess...after multiple attempts over the years, I finally got through the whole thing. It really is that unwatchable.

With the impressive pedigree of talent involved, it would seem to be a movie any avid connoisseur of camp should love, directed by the great Robert Aldrich (Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The Killing of Sister George) and starring the enigmatic and glamorous film goddess Kim Novak (Vertigo)  as well as the brilliant and intense British actor Peter Finch (Network). But the movie disappoints on practically every level.

Elsa Brinkmann confronts the legendary Lylah Clare

The plot is promising: The persona of a long-dead film diva is resurrected for a new biopic when her Svengali-like director and lover Lewis Zarkin (Finch) finds a woman bearing an eerie and uncanny resemblance to the deceased star. And not only does Elsa (Novak) look just like Lylah Clare, she is seemingly possessed by the dead actress’s restless spirit.

Novak, resplendent in Renie gown and Monroe-like Guilaroff flip hairdo

But the film just doesn’t work. It’s a total bore, despite a couple of fleeting opportunities for a flash of Aldrich’s gothic magic. The only scene in the whole film that approaches the master’s best work is the cocktail party and press conference early in the picture where Elsa Brinkmann (stage name Campbell) is introduced to the Hollywood press corps. Here, the great character actress Coral Browne (unforgettable in Auntie Mame and in Aldrich’s own Sister George) makes the most of her cameo as the embittered, disabled gossip columnist Molly Luther. Though Browne returns all-too-briefly in a couple of scenes before the end of the movie, there are two more long hours to get through.

The only scene with any dramatic tension...

...thanks to the redoubtable and wickedly bitchy Coral Browne 

If the movie has any other saving grace at all, it’s the radiant Miss Novak herself. Evoking the essence of legendary screen goddesses like Harlow, Monroe and Dietrich (and naturally, herself!) in diaphanous silk Renie gowns and iconic Guilaroff hairstyles, Novak really gives the part her all, and the moments when the demure Elsa channels the raucous, Teutonic, foul-mouthed Lylah are truly riveting. 

Novak gives a bravura performance...

...but Finch fails to rise above his material

But Novak and company are severely hampered by a meandering script with long, talky scenes that lead nowhere, mostly philosophical treatises on how Hollywood shapes and manipulates reality through popular culture. Attempts at wit and comic irony fall flat, despite the talents of fine actors like Ernest Borgnine as a stereotypical studio head. The ridiculous ending is worst of all, where director Zarkin rewrites Lylah’s death scene, placing her on (not kidding here) a circus trapeze, from out of nowhere. (Things that make you go, “huh?”)

Another strange aspect of this picture is the decision to cast so many female characters with heavy European accents, so thick that you can’t understand a word they’re saying. It’s hard enough to decipher Kim when she affects her throaty Dietrich-esque German accent—but we also have to struggle with the the mozzarella-heavy Italian of both Rossella Falk as Lylah’s lesbian confidante and Valentina Cortese as her ebullient costume designer. (Obviously the filmmakers were counting on European grosses to offset the losses of this turkey, but hasn’t anyone ever heard of dubbing?)

Don't worry, it's almost the end of the movie

In the hands of someone like Aldrich’s brilliant screenwriting collaborator Lukas Heller (Baby Jane, Sweet Charlotte), this might have been a much more satisfying film.  Or perhaps some surgical film editing could have helped the pace of this very uneven cinematic disappointment. As it is, we are left with a few fragmented images and moments that fail to fulfill the promise of a cult classic that elevates a great star to mythic legend.  Instead, it’s on my personal list of Worst Films Ever Made...it makes Valley of the Dolls look as if it were written, produced and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Many Thanks, Robert Altman, Robert Altman

A crumbling relic of the past, which was never built to be anything but a facade in the first place, is far from a foundation on which to base a life and an identity. That’s the theme of Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, the little-seen 1982 film based on a play by Ed Graczyk and directed by Robert Altman. Currently unavailable through any mainstream DVD-on-demand service, lovers of this film must content themselves with scratchy VHS transfers offered by those lucky enough to buy the film when it was still in circulation more than two decades ago. (And thank goodness for that crumbling relic of a videotape which allowed this film lover to enjoy this remarkable little film once again.)

Black, Bates and Cher—Disciples of James Dean

A quirky piece, even for the king of quirk himself, the great Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, The Player), Come Back To The Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean is a forgotten gem of a film, featuring a collection of strong and dimensional women’s roles brought to life by an eclectic group of fine actors. Here is where film fans will find Sandy Dennis in her last great role and superstar Cher in her first, plus startling turns by a young Kathy Bates, Marta Heflin, and a Karen Black as you’ve never seen her before.

Sudie Bond, Sandy Dennis and Cher

Based on a 1976 play by Ed Graczyk, Jimmy Dean takes place in a dusty and arid one-horse Texas town several hundred miles from Marfa, where scenes from the 1956 George Stevens epic Giant were filmed. It is now two decades since these local Texans experienced their brief brush with Hollywood magic, and the members of a local fan club, the Disciples of James Dean, are scheduled to meet at the local dime store where they originally held their meetings, 20 years after Giant and the young star’s untimely death. All that's left of the past are crumbling bits of the fictional Reata Ranch, which Mona collects during a yearly pilgrimage to the long-abandoned film location.

By the late ‘70s, the “well-made play” as popularized by Ibsen and continued by Tennessee Williams and William Inge had fallen out of favor, and Graczyk’s play was considered old-fashioned and derivative with its rhythmic and formulaic uncovering of secrets and revelations, culminating in a transformational climax, but within this well-worn structure actors are allowed to shine.

Edna Louise (Heflin), Mona (Dennis) and Juanita (Bond)

Mona, Joe (Patton) and Juanita

A tense moment for Mona, Joanne and Sissy

Lacking the operatic and often Shakespearean spectacle of Robert Altman’s most well-known films, this one is a curiousity, with its claustrophobic single setting of a faded drugstore interior sweltering in a Texas heatwave. Altman also uses the stage conventions of lighting and the reflection of a mirror behind the counter to differentiate the 1955 flashback scenes with the present action. But fans of the filmed stage play genre will appreciate Robert Altman’s loving focus on his actors. Having also directed the play on the Broadway stage with the same cast, the director chooses to allow them to tell the story.

Sandy Dennis as the high-strung Mona

As the troubled and dreamy Mona, chosen as an extra for a few of Giant’s large crowd scenes and still starry-eyed from her mythic encounter with James Dean, Sandy Dennis gives one of her most layered and complicated performances. Look up the word neurotic in the dictionary and you’re bound to find a picture of Ms. Dennis in any of her iconic film performances, perhaps in her Oscar-winning turn as Honey in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, or as Jack Lemmon’s beleaguered wife in Neil Simon’s The Out-of-Towners. Mona is a crowning achievement for Dennis, who did very few films after this one.

Karen Black reveals an uncomfortable secret as Joanne

The versatile Karen Black, who worked so well with director Altman in the legendary 1975 country music epic Nashville, gives one of the most arresting performances of her career in the difficult role of Joanne, the transsexual visitor who serves as catalyst for the destruction of Mona’s fragile facade of untruth. Joanne’s “Edie Gormé” monologue, delivered while perched against the rusted jukebox, is an iconic moment for Karen Black fans.

Cher's acting debut, as the sassy yet vulnerable Sissy

Jimmy Dean also marks the film acting debut of Cher—no, her appearances with Sonny in specialty movies Good Times and Chastity don’t count! Already a seasoned performer, Cher makes the transition from musical variety to drama seamlessly and skillfully, recreating her stage triumph as the brassy, bawdy and big-bosomed Sissy.

The smaller roles are standouts, too, particularly plaintive-voiced veteran character actress Sudie Bond as Juanita, the hyper-religious proprietress of the drugstore; Altman stalwart Marta Heflin as a shy wallflower, and Kathy Bates as her pushy, loud-mouthed former BFF. The only male role in the story, their gay friend Joe, is played in the flashbacks by Mark Patton. Unseen by the audience is the title character, the supposed offspring of Mona and the movie star, a half-wit who became a cause celebre when used to promote Texas tourism after James Dean’s sudden death.

Watching these wonderful actors work together under the direction of a creative risk-taker like Altman is a joy. Even if this film is ultimately deemed a failure by film historians, it’s an experimental work of of movie art designed for lovers of acting and theatrical storytelling.  

Robert Altman with his stars 

"Sincerely" by the McGuire Sisters